Another year has rolled around and we've missed the chance to revolutionize our public education system.
Read Andrew Coulson's book, "Market Education: The Unknown History." Make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened. This is not your local school administrators' favorite text. Our county library doesn't even carry it.
This guy did his homework. He's looked back to ancient Greece as well as Islamic, Asian, and European systems in the Middle Ages and past two centuries to see what makes schooling effective. One thing that doesn't is what we have: centralized, government-run, financed through third-party funding (i.e., everyone's tax money). He concludes, ironically, that the very system of "trained" professionals and inclusive, non-offensive curricula precludes us from achieving meaningful universal education.
If you're against even considering concepts such as school vouchers, then Coulson's ideas will be too overwhelming. After viewing 2,500 years of educational approaches and recent academic research, he says that there are five key characteristics to an effective system: parental choice and financial responsibility, school freedom, competition, and profit-making. In short, a market approach. Talented teachers can make a lot more money under this set-up, just as Japanese tutors do under that country's free-market supplementary "juku" system.
I heard that! You said: "You're crazy!" Undoubtedly, but Coulson shares important historical information whether or not we want to hear it.
This book is so full of evidence that it's hard to reduce it for this article. He cites numerous studies showing that the longer American students stay in public school the farther they fall behind their foreign counterparts. Private schools consistently outperform the public system at half the per pupil cost. Despite myths perpetrated by public school folks, private schools are actually more diverse and the gap between white and minority student achievement there is much less. In short, the "ideal" public system is broken, but few will admit and fix it.
One of my favorite tidbits is the finding that public schools, on average, have a ratio of administrative/support staff to teachers that's about 10 times greater than private schools. Being a federal government employee, I know how these things happen. Intentions are always great, but when looking back years later, you ask, "How did THAT happen?" In fact, in New York City, the ratio is 50-to-1 compared with that city's Catholic school system.
His findings about public and private schools really shouldn't seem so startling. The more parents and administrators understand and agree upon educative goals, as they do in private schools, the better achievement will be. Public schools say they want parents involved, but they don't. My experiences confirm this. They only want volunteers to do their bidding, not their curricula building. They generally don't feel that parents are adequately informed. Coulson shows that this is not true, even in lower-income, minority communities. These parents, although sometimes poorly educated, are more than aware of what educational results are needed for their kids.
Public school problems center on trying to provide a universally agreeable curriculum to diverse communities. Because tax money is taken from all to educate all, what approach satisfies all? The answer, of course, is none. Coulson says you never see Jews demonstrating at Islamic schools or Protestants picketing Catholic ones. Everyone knows what these schools represent. Folks choose what they want. Yet, parents can't easily pick public schools even though payment is mandatory. If private schools are more appropriate for your child, you pay again.
Third-party funding of education, where consumers (parents-students) don't pay suppliers directly (administrators-teachers-unions), explains the astronomical rise in total and per pupil costs. If you buy a store product that doesn't meet your needs, you go to the manager and demand, and often get, satisfaction. It doesn't work that way in public schools, does it? That's because there's no real connection between the money paid and the service rendered. That separation prevents accountability and responsiveness.
Coulson recounted a story about a wealthy attorney who agreed to endow a school, but for only one-third of its cost. He insisted that parents cover the remainder because people are always more careful with their own money than they are with others'.
The benefactor: Pliny the Younger
The date: circa 90 A.D.
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Fred W. Apelquist, III, M.Ed.
Approximately 700 words.
© 1999